


free to play

by stophit



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25713403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stophit/pseuds/stophit
Summary: Joshua’s only experience with being hardcore in games, mobile or otherwise, was Flappy Bird. If there was Competitive Animal Crossing, he’d probably be great at it if it involved chasing people around with axes and was a competition about inconveniencing the other players as much as possible. But for any other games? He’s got a delicate constitution. He can’t look at screens for more than an hour.He looks at the push notification on his phone again and sighs. He needs to make one of thoseDO IT FOR HIMposters with Jun’s face on it. At least he could refer to something concrete when he taps the game’s icon to try it again.
Relationships: Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Wen Jun Hui | Jun
Comments: 13
Kudos: 75





	free to play

As much as Joshua would like to say he’s working on his essay, he’s really just good at _looking_ like he’s working. He sits with his back straight and makes a show of stretching his arms above his head, getting ready for another thirty minutes of scrolling aimlessly through social media, when the table makes a rattling noise.

Across the table from him, Jun scrambles up from his slumped-over position to check his phone, nearly knocking over his mug in the process. The other students in this café don’t even bat an eye at them, but Joshua raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” Jun whispers, swiping the alarm away. Joshua’s watched this happen all afternoon and the past few afternoons they’ve hung out, so he keeps his chin in his hand and watches Jun without a care in the world. It’s probably creepy, but look—if Jun can do it to him while Joshua’s watching, then Joshua can stare at him all he wants. He’s real easy on the eyes.

It’s not that Jun isn’t paying attention to him during their friend hangouts whenever he plays games on his phone. Jun’s good at listening, but he’s a lot better at talking if they counted rambling as talking, which Joshua does. (Minghao laughs at him and calls him whipped, and yeah? What if he _was_?) He likes listening to Jun, so it’s not a bad compromise at all.

He learns not to take it personally that Jun’s on his phone all the time. They’ve talked about it, after the time Jun looked at him with an expression that was partly exasperated, partly insecure. _I’m still listening, hyung_ , he’d said. _You don’t have to test if I’m listening_ _by asking so many questions_ _._

He felt like a shithead after that. He told Jun that he wanted to spend time with him and it was weird to hang out with someone on his phone all the time, but he also apologized for assuming Jun wasn’t listening. He’s more or less used to Jun taking out his phone now and tapping at it from time to time, but there’s one thing he still doesn’t really get.

After about two minutes, Jun lets out a small sigh of relief and puts his phone down.

“Jun,” he starts. “I’ve been wondering.”

His eyes open wide, trained right on him. It’s always intense, but their friends are pretty used to it. Joshua got used to it, and then he _stopped_ getting used to it once he realized how much he liked Jun looking at him like that, which came with its own set of problems.

“Hm?”

“Do you set all those alarms because you’re late to everything all the time?” They’re not usually disruptive because Jun keeps his phone on silent, but he’d forgotten this time. Joshua’s not going to pretend he was being the perfect student, so he’s happy with the distraction, especially when it means he can stare at Jun for about two minutes straight without him noticing.

Jun kicks him under the table. “I made it on time today! I’m always on time for you, hyung!”

The little Jeonghan in his mind laughs at him as he turns his hopeless cry into a smile. “Neither of us are punctual,” he corrects. “We’re just late at the same time.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess.” They agreed to meet up here at noon. They _both_ showed up at quarter to one. “But no, that’s not what the alarms are for.”

“Obviously.” He bites his lip to hide his smile when Jun kicks him again.

For a second, Jun looks like he doubts himself, but it’s gone so fast that Joshua thinks he imagined it. “It’s for my games.”

“The ones on your phone?” He frowns in thought. He doesn’t have any idea how the alarms are related at all.

“Yeah. Sometimes if I’m doing events and want to rank, I set alarms for when…” Joshua tilts his head when he trails off. “No, this sounds dumb.”

Nonsensical, maybe, but not _dumb_ if Jun seems to enjoy it. Half of their friends enjoy mobile games too, but most of them are less precious because they’re little shits to Joshua _and_ they’re not Jun. “I really don’t get it, but you can show me—”

Before he even finishes talking, Jun’s jumped up to move his seat from across Joshua to right next to him, holding his phone and sitting _very_ close to him. Joshua actually tries very, very hard to listen to what he’s saying, but he always gets jittery when he’s excited—he talks faster, tapping around on different screens in the game a little too fast. He gets the gist of the game and what the alarms are for, something about timers running out and regenerating passes to play events.

He doesn’t know if top 1000 players is a lot, but it sounds like a lot; Jun lets out a groan and complains about _falling out of tiers_ or something, dropping his head onto Joshua’s shoulder when he looks at some more numbers on the screen.

Another alarm goes off, and Joshua looks down at the game’s interface. “What’s the alarm for if there’s still three hours left until your… stamina fills again?”

“That’s for a different game.” Jun lets out a fake sob before closing the app he was showing Joshua and opening another one in a folder titled _Games_ that has at least six different other icons with anime girls on it.

“You’re playing _all_ of those?” Joshua says with a bit of awe, squeezing in one last question before he loses Jun for the next two minutes.

With a nod at him, still keeping his head on Joshua’s shoulder, his tongue pokes out of his mouth and he starts something like a battle.

* * *

“Wonwoo,” Joshua says in that really annoying cutesy way, sitting on the armrest of his gaming chair. He didn’t get any of his essay done at the café with Jun, which he isn’t pressed about, but now he’s got other questions. “ _Wonwoo_ ,” he tries again, leaning in to the mic of his headset until he nearly swallows it.

“ _Shua_!” Seungcheol’s voice screams, tinny through the headset, and Wonwoo winces at the volume. He’s otherwise focused, though. He’s used to Joshua, unfortunately. He should do something about that. “ _You ass, pay me back for_ —”

“Wonwoo.”

“What.”

“I have a sensitive question to ask you. Can you mute Cheol for a second?” He says it in his most serious voice this time, putting the jokes away.

Wonwoo’s just distracted enough to buy it without questioning him; he clicks some button on the side of his mouse (why does it have, like, a thousand buttons? Why are all gamers like this?) and lets his headphones sit around his neck. “Everything okay, dude?”

“Not really.” He pauses for dramatic effect. He thinks Wonwoo gets a kill against Seungcheol, but he can only tell because Seungcheol lets out a very long sigh. “You play the same mobile games as Junnie, right?”

Wonwoo clicks the same button on his mouse. “Joshua’s ‘sensitive question’ was about him trying to get into Jun’s pants.”

Joshua puts his hands on either side of Wonwoo’s head and shakes it back and forth, trying to crush it like an apple. It doesn’t work. With a sigh, he walks out of the room, but not before he says, “I’m not making you dinner tonight!”

* * *

Wonwoo crawls out of his room hours later, cracking his neck, and offers to install the games he knows that Jun has on his phone. “I’m not Soonyoung,” Joshua says, looking disgusted. “I can download something on my phone.”

“Hey,” Soonyoung shouts from the living room. “I know how to make a PowerPoint now!”

Both he and Wonwoo ignore him. It’s too late for Wonwoo to make the offer in exchange for dinner, but Joshua lets him download the games anyway.

With the pot of water boiling for Wonwoo’s instant ramen, Wonwoo sits beside him at the dinner table and points out different game mechanics to him during the tutorial, reading the story over his shoulder as he steals food off Joshua’s plate.

He’s overwhelmed by everything happening at once. Joshua’s used to anime plots, but tying it to a game experience makes it more incomprehensible. He has too much to think about, and this is just the _tutorial_.

At least the game and Wonwoo guide him through it without too much incident. It doesn’t make that much sense to him—there’s too many different weapons and types of armor and rarities and _characters_. The art seems nice, but he’s completely lost, so he puts it away after a few minutes to focus on eating dinner.

He doesn’t plan on coming back to it, which is a shame according to Wonwoo. “It’s a beginner-friendly game,” he says as Joshua takes their dishes to the sink.

“Isn’t that what you said about that one shooty one?”

Wonwoo laughs at him and doesn’t even clarify, the evil little man.

He forgets about it for a bit until just before bed, when he sees a push notification from the game, saying that his stamina’s refilled. He goes to swipe it away and then reconsiders. Jun likes _something_ about games like this, right? Probably because his energy level is the same as a cat with a laser pointer, but it _does_ seem like he’s always having a lot of fun.

Joshua’s only experience with being hardcore in games, mobile or otherwise, was Flappy Bird. If there was Competitive Animal Crossing, he’d probably be great at it if it involved chasing people around with axes and was a competition about inconveniencing the other players as much as possible. But for any other games? He’s got a delicate constitution. He can’t look at screens for more than an hour.

He looks at the push notification on his phone again and sighs. He needs to make one of those _DO IT FOR HIM_ posters with Jun’s face on it. At least he could refer to something concrete when he taps the game’s icon to try it again.

* * *

He’s poking at it in secret for the next few days until Wonwoo catches the push notification on his phone for a stamina refill. It’s nothing embarrassing, but Wonwoo _makes_ it embarrassing, asking about his progress and how he’s liking the story and all of that.

“Oh?” Seunghcheol comes out of the bathroom. “Is Shua playing what I think he is?”

Joshua tries not to grimace. In almost any other situation, Joshua’s the one teasing the shit out of Seungcheol. This is one of few subjects that Seungcheol has the upper hand, and he takes it to hell and back. “Did you wash your hands?” Joshua asks instead, smiling in the way that he hopes is communicating that he can and will square up with Seungcheol.

Seungcheol laughs in his face. “Yeah, look,” he says, smacking his still-wet hands onto Joshua’s shirt.

After a scuffle in which Wonwoo steps back while they start trying to strangle each other in the hallway, Seungcheol drags Joshua to the couch and sits on him. “Wonwoo, add him to the guild.”

Wonwoo does, mostly because he has a personal interest in seeing Joshua suffer over Jun.

Joshua’s phone is sitting on the coffee table, and it starts vibrating. One message at first, so he thinks it’s the notification about joining the guild (whatever that means), and then another, and another. Seungcheol leans over to pick it up, making Joshua wheeze out another groan, and any attempts to get his phone back are met with Seungcheol just shoving his hand over his entire face.

“Cute,” Seungcheol says, and then gives the phone back to Joshua (after removing his hand from his face), which means that whatever’s happening to his phone is worse than keeping it away from him, which means it’s Jun-related.

With a sigh, he scrolls through the notification. The first one is clear surprise, asking him how long he’s been playing, and then the next is the classic Jun stream of consciousness: whether Joshua likes the game, if he needs any help, if he needs any items just ask Jun, weird gameplay tips. All of it.

It’s worth the embarrassment, actually. Jun being excited isn’t a _rare_ event by any means, but it doesn’t make it any less endearing to Joshua at all.

That is, until he remembers that Wonwoo and Seungcheol are still there. They’re _staring_ at him, and it’s really not as cute as when Jun does it. “Aw, look at how red his face is,” Seungcheol coos, poking his cheek. “Invite me to the wedding.”

“Leave me to pine in peace,” Joshua says.

“Wow,” Wonwoo says in the least surprised voice ever. “He’s already offering to gift you things. It’s like how guys gift random girls in games shit because they’re girls, except you’re just his friend and he wants to help you _and_ you don’t hate it because you’re actually madly in love with him.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, Seungcheol joins in. “We should find you a game where your characters can get married. We can put that on the list of things that happen before you two got together. You guys got married before you started dating.”

“Neither of you will see heaven,” Joshua grumbles.

* * *

He forgets to play once free rolls stop and he actually has to do all of the schoolwork he’s ignored because of poking at the game during boredom. He remembers it was a thing when he runs into Jun on campus. Joshua keeps a friendly smile as Jun spots him, gestures for the rest of their friends to keep going without him, then dashes over to Joshua.

Joshua tries very hard not to flip the middle finger at the rest of their friends, who do _not_ keep walking, but instead take the time to make inappropriate gestures at Joshua while Jun’s back is turned.

“Shua-hyung!” Jun’s hair is windswept from the incredibly fast speeds at which he ran over, which really isn’t helping Joshua’s entire deal. “How’s the game?”

Joshua looks away for a second. “I… forgot to keep playing,” he says, laughing a bit. “It kind of didn’t make sense to me, and then school stuff, and…”

It was never his sort of thing to begin with, games like this (and games in general), but he still wants to apologize at least in part. Even though Jun went through all the effort of explaining the game to him that one night and sounded _really_ excited about it, it never stuck.

He braces himself for Jun’s disappointment, because he can get whiny, and that’s sort of cute if Joshua didn’t feel a _little_ bad. But Jun brightens up and laughs, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s fine, hyung!” One of his alarms goes off, and he shuts it off quickly before shoving it in his pocket.

“Wait, don’t you have an event or… something? I understand that, now.”

“It ends in an hour, and I’m safe. It’s okay.” Jun grins at him with all teeth, tilting his head. Joshua tries _very_ hard to ignore the rest of their friends far behind Jun overreacting. “Thanks anyway for trying.”

“You can still talk to me about it if you want.” Jun’s hand is warm on his shoulder. He _hates_ this. It’s all too much. Stupid sincere cat-adjacent hottie. “I wanna know about the stuff you like, of course I’d be interested.”

Jun laughs. “That’s what all my friends that haven’t met you say when I talk about you!”

Joshua blinks. Christ, he really hopes their friends didn’t hear that. “Wh—”

“Even if you don’t play the game, I can show them your icon in the guild now. You picked a character with bunny ears, right?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer before taking out his phone. “I’m gonna be late to class, but let’s meet up tomorrow still, okay?”

Jun pats him again on the shoulder before running away again, and Joshua stares with the most manic, threatening, _what-the-fuck_ grin he can muster before he remembers how to breathe.


End file.
